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Thursday, June 16, 2016

MyHeritage Introduces Sun Charts

MyHeritage.com has introduced a new type of descendant fan chart available to all users of MyHeritage for free. Quoting from their recent press release:

The center of the Sun Chart features an ancestor selected by the user, with multiple generations of descendants in the outer rings. This chart is the world's first descendant fan chart with personal photos, unique to MyHeritage.

The Sun Chart is designed to place as many descendants as possible on the smallest possible chart, scaling to hundreds and even thousands of people,
making it ideal for sharing with relatives at a family reunion or get-together. Descendant charts that would not fit in a room if arranged horizontally or vertically, can now be prepared in this compact circular format and hung conveniently on the wall. It is designed to be the most compact family tree chart, while offering a very eye-catching and attractive visualization of a family tree, complete with photos.

The Sun Chart was created to solve a particular challenge. Family history enthusiasts are always looking for the ideal chart for family reunions and other festive family events. A regular descendants chart, typically horizontal or vertical, can become enormous, too large and unwieldy to be practical for events or for hanging on the wall. Descendant fan charts are a popular choice but are limited in the number of generations and don't include personal photos.

The Sun Chart is designed to plot as many descendants as possible on the smallest chart possible. Charts that include hundreds or even thousands of people can now be prepared in this compact circular format and hung conveniently on the wall.

Non-MyHeritage users can easily import their tree to MyHeritage (as GEDCOM) and generate this chart.

The motivation for creating the chart has been documented by more than one MyHeritage.com videos recently. You might want to go to the MyHeritage.com YouTube Channel to see some of the other amazing things going on at MyHeritage.

"The new Sun Chart is a perfect example of MyHeritage's unique approach," said Uri Gonen, Senior VP of Product Management at MyHeritage. "We bridge together cutting-edge technologies and an appreciation for the wisdom of generations past. When our research on the genealogy of the community in Corfu revealed an unusual and highly useful family tree format, we decided to harness our technological abilities to bring the benefit of this style of family tree chart to as many people as possible, and added personal photos to make it even more appealing."

Sun Charts provide extensive configuration options to control photo size, font size, and level of included detail, so users can customize each chart to their needs. MyHeritage has developed an algorithm for compacting the charts, which calculates every person's position precisely in order to result in the smallest possible chart.

Personal photos are included in the chart, helping to bring the family tree to life, and creating a visualization that is more appealing and interesting.

After generating the chart, users can download it in PDF format and print it themselves at home or at any printer, or email it to their family members. MyHeritage also provides an integrated poster printing service that is useful for charts of unusual size, with worldwide shipping.